My name is Victoria Dalpe, and I am a writer and
visual artist based out of Providence, RI. I am also an unabashed lover of
horror, monsters, gore, the gothic, the gruesome, the weird and all that all of
that entails. My short fiction has appeared in various anthologies. Take a look
here: https://www.amazon.com/Victoria-Dalpe/e/B00GKT7JN6

My first novel, Parasite LIfe, put out by ChiZIne Publications, is a horror YA
novel that features a sapphic coming of age story. It was directly influenced
by Le Fanu’s 1872 book Carmilla and
the films of Jean Rollin, in particular The
Living Dead Girl (La Morte Vivante) from 1982.

So that is what I am going to talk about today:
the intersection of vampires and lesbians.

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla is
without question the wellspring from which most lesbian vampire fiction sprung:
A classic gothic tale of two gal pals, where one girl gets stronger while the
other weaker. Carmilla was
distinctive in the staunch Victorian period it was written: She was a female
character who only preys on women, and is actively courting/seducing Laura.
Carmilla was the first female vampire in Victorian fiction; she predates Bram
Stoker’s Dracula by almost 20 years.
Carmilla is a predator. She is inhuman and yet seemingly starved for love and
affection. A creature centuries old, moving from one victim to another, ancient
but also unchanging, forced to be a young girl forever. The book asks a great
central question: If you could make someone love you, make them die for you
even, and you had to kill them to live… how would that change how you saw the
world? How would that affect your emotional life?

Since Carmilla was published,
there have been many attempts at updating its themes and character
relationships for modern audiences.

One of the best examples is the recent Canadian Carmilla web tv series. (Fun fact:it is sponsored and heavily advertised within by Kotex, which is so
apropos it just cracks me up). The show updates the story by both bringing it
into the modern day and by severely shifting the tone away from the gothic and
towards a kind of post-Buffy pop culture sensibility. Perhaps the best thing
about it is its almost blase’ approach to same sex relationships. Carmilla just
happens to be a lesbian and a
vampire. The two lead’s relationship is treated as part of the story but not
the whole story. Check it out
here:https://youtu.be/h6_3IwC3hC4

Vampirism has always been an effective metaphor for homosexuality
because it allowed authors to pair same sex relations in the safe place of
genre fiction. It was okay that they were two women or men, because one of them
was a monster. Using mesmerism and coercion, characters could interact in ways
that normally would be seen as taboo. An article about homosexuality and
vampirism if you want further reading on that: https://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Homosexuality+and+the+Vampire

The Moth Diaries by Rachel
Klein also explored the Carmilla story and grappled with that quandary. Klein’s
story deals with it by using an unreliable narrator as a protagonist. This
protagonist is questioning her sanity as well as her sexuality. The book (and
the film based on it) are ultimately more about jealousy and feelings of
displacement than sexuality. The issue of whether or not the protagonist is in
love with her friend Lucy is not the key issue, instead it is merely a part of
the larger question of if Ernessa is a vampire, or even real at all.

In Jean Rollin’s film Living Dead
Girl, best friends deal with a most unfortunate conundrum: one of them is
newly back from the dead with a hunger for blood, and the other is loyal and
desperate to help. https://youtu.be/f3TXqJg7e3Q

Rollin’s film explores how hard it is to be in a lopsided relationship.
Vampirism is the perfect metaphor for a toxic/unbalanced relationships. In
Rollins’ hands, it is a sweet/sad story that shows the inherent tragedy of both
love and vampirism.

Rollins’ take on this was a big motivation for my book. His film
presents an honesty to the women’srelationship that connected for me. It manages to take the stark,
exploitation elements of a lesbian vampire story and turn them into fertile
emotional territory.

Every relationship in the works cited above is toxic to some extent.
They also all tell their tales largely from the perspective of the victim, of
the partner in the relationship that is being taken from.

In writing Parasite Life I
wanted to approach the standard tropes of Carmilla
from the other perspective.

Which is to say, Parasite Life isn’t
written from the perspective of the human lover. It’s not a victim’s tale. It’s
the story of the vampire. How does it feel to be the aggressor? What if you
couldn’t stop being the taker no matter how hard you might want to? If you can
coerce your partner, where is the line between consent and rape?

How does it feel to be inside the head of a teenager, raging with latent
sexuality and confusion, who also needs blood to survive?

I felt it was important to explore vampirism and sexuality without
making Jane’s sexuality the big deal within the book. Taking a page from the Carmilla web series and The Living Dead Girl, I felt it was
important to approach the character’s sexuality with a light touch, because I
didn’t want to conflate homosexuality and “monstrousness.”

I tried to load my story with as much teenage emotion and angst as
possible. It is about sexuality, yes, but also about issues of abuse, parental
neglect, and the resultant emotions. It is a book about feeling like an
outsider… and then realizing that you are
an outsider and what that means. I thought this might all bring a fresh
perspective to a well-worn tradition.

And now I will put it out to you readers, got a favorite lady vampire?
And what fictional characters/books/movies have inspired your work?

Wicked Seasons

Epitaphs

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